No. 33.] SATURDAY,
DECEMBER 10, 1859
[PRICE 2d.
THE WOMAN IN WHITE.
HARTRIGHT'S NARRATIVE CONTINUED.
VII.
When I entered the room, I found Miss Halcombe and an elderly lady seated at the
luncheon-table.
The elderly lady, when I was presented to her, proved to be Miss Fairlie's
former governess, Mrs. Vesey, who had been briefly described to me by my lively
companion at the breakfast-table, as possessed of "all the cardinal virtues, and
counting for nothing." I can do little more than offer my humble testimony to
the truthfulness of Miss Halcombe's sketch of the old lady's character. Mrs.
Vesey looked the personification of human composure and female amiability. A
calm enjoyment of a calm existence beamed in drowsy smiles on her plump, placid
face. Some of us rush through life; and some of us saunter through life. Mrs.
Vesey sat through life. Sat in the
house, early and late; sat in the garden; sat in unexpected window-seats in
passages; sat (on a camp-stool) when her friends tried to take her out walking;
sat before she looked at anything, before she talked of anything, before she
answered, Yes, or No, to the commonest question always with the same serene
smile on her lips, the same vacantly attentive turn of her head, the same
snugly, comfortable position of her hands and arms, under every possible change
of domestic circumstances. A mild, a compliant, an unutterably tranquil and
harmless old lady, who never by any chance suggested the idea that she had been
actually alive since the hour of her birth. Nature has so much to do in this
world, and is engaged in generating such a vast variety of co-existent
productions, that she must surely be now and then too flurried and confused to
distinguish between the different processes that she is carrying on at the same
time. Starting from this point of view, it will always remain my private
persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs. Vesey was born,
and that the good lady suffered the consequences of a vegetable preoccupation in
the mind of the Mother of us all.
"Now, Mrs. Vesey," said Miss Halcombe, looking brighter, sharper, and readier
than ever, by contrast with the undemonstrative old lady at her side, "what will
you have? A cutlet?"
Mrs. Vesey crossed her dimpled hands on the edge of the table; smiled placidly;
and said, "Yes, dear."
"What is that, opposite Mr. Hartright? Boiled chicken, is it not? I thought you
liked boiled chicken better than cutlet, Mrs. Vesey?"
Mrs. Vesey took her dimpled hands off the edge of the table and crossed them on
her lap instead; nodded contemplatively at the boiled chicken; and said "Yes,
dear."
"Well, but which will you have, to-day? Shall Mr. Hartright give you some
chicken? or shall I give you some cutlet?"
Mrs. Vesey put one of her dimpled hands back again on the edge of the table;
hesitated drowsily; and said, "Which you please, dear."
"Mercy on me! it's a question for your taste, my good lady, not for mine.
Suppose you have a little of both? and suppose you begin with the chicken,
because Mr. Hartright looks devoured by anxiety to carve for you?"
Mrs. Vesey put the other dimpled hand back on the edge of the table; brightened
dimly, one moment; went out again, the next; bowed obediently; and said, "If you
please, sir."
Surely a mild, a compliant, an unutterably tranquil and harmless old lady? But
enough, perhaps, for the present, of Mrs. Vesey.
All this time, there were no signs of Miss Fairlie. We finished our luncheon;
and still she never appeared. Miss Halcombe, whose quick eye nothing escaped,
noticed the looks that I cast, from time to time, in the direction of the door.
"I understand you, Mr. Hartright," she said; "you are wondering what has become
of your other pupil. She has been down stairs, and has got over her headache;
but has not sufficiently recovered her appetite to join us at lunch. If you will
put yourself under my charge, I think I can undertake to find her somewhere in
the garden."
She took up a parasol, lying on a chair near her, and led the way out, by a long
window at the bottom of the room, which opened on to the lawn. It is almost
unnecessary to say that we left Mrs. Vesey still seated at the table, with her
dimpled hands still crossed on the edge of it; apparently settled in that
position for the rest of the afternoon.
As we crossed the lawn, Miss Halcombe looked at me significantly, and shook her
head.
"That mysterious adventure of yours," she said, "still remains involved in its
own appropriate midnight darkness. I have been all the morning looking over my
mother's letters; and I have made no discoveries yet. However, don't despair,
Mr. Hartright. This is a matter of curiosity; and you have got a woman for your
ally. Under such conditions, success is certain, sooner or later. The letters
are not exhausted. I have three packets still left, and you may confidently rely
on my spending the whole evening over them."
Here, then, was one of my anticipations of the morning still unfulfilled. I
began to wonder, next, whether my introduction to Miss Fairlie would disappoint
the expectations that I had been forming of her since breakfast-time.
"And how did you get on with my uncle?" inquired Miss Halcombe, as we left the
lawn and turned into a shrubbery. "Was he particularly nervous this morning?
Never mind considering about your answer, Mr. Hartright. The mere fact of your
being obliged to consider is enough for me. I see in your face that he
was particularly nervous; and, as I
am amiably unwilling to throw you into the same condition, I ask no more."
We turned off into a winding path while she was speaking, and approached a
pretty summer-house, built of wood, in the form of a miniature Swiss chβlet [châlet].
The one room of the summer-house, as we ascended the steps at the door, was
occupied by a young lady. She was standing near a rustic table, looking out at
the inland view of moor and hill presented by a gap in the trees, and absently
turning over the leaves of a little sketch-book that lay at her side. This was
Miss Fairlie.
How can I describe her? How can I separate her from my own sensations, and from
all that has happened in the later time? How can I see her again as she looked
when my eyes first rested on her as she should look, now, to the eyes that
are about to see her in these pages?
The water-colour drawing that I made of Laura Fairlie, at an after period, in
the place and attitude in which I first saw her, lies on my desk while I write.
I look at it, and there dawns upon me brightly, from the dark greenish-brown
background of the summer-house, a light, youthful figure, clothed in a simple
muslin dress, the pattern of it formed by broad alternate stripes of delicate
blue and white. A scarf of the same material sits crisply and closely round her
shoulders, and a little straw hat, of the natural colour, plainly and sparingly
trimmed with ribbon to match the gown, covers her head, and throws its soft
pearly shadow over the upper part of her face. Her hair is of so faint and pale
a brown not flaxen, and yet almost as light; not golden, and yet almost as
glossy that it nearly melts, here and there, into the shadow of the hat. It
is plainly parted and drawn back over her ears, and the line of it ripples
naturally as it crosses her forehead. The eyebrows are rather darker than the
hair; and the eyes are of that soft, limpid, turquoise blue, so often sung by
the poets, so seldom seen in real life. Lovely eyes in colour, lovely eyes in
form large and tender and quietly thoughtful but beautiful above all
things in the clear truthfulness of look that dwells in their inmost depths, and
shines through all their changes of expression with the light of a purer and a
better world. The charm most gently and yet most distinctly expressed
which they shed over the whole face, so covers and transforms its little natural
human blemishes elsewhere, that it is difficult to estimate the relative merits
and defects of the other features. It is hard to see that the lower part of the
face is too delicately refined away towards the chin to be in full and fair
proportion with the upper part; that the nose, in escaping the aquiline bend
(always hard and cruel in a woman, no matter how abstractedly perfect it may
be), has erred a little in the other extreme, and has missed the ideal
straightness of line; and that the sweet, sensitive lips are subject to a slight
nervous contraction, when she smiles, which draws them upward a little at one
corner, towards the cheek. It might be possible to note these blemishes in
another woman's face, but it is not easy to dwell on them in hers, so subtly are
they connected with all that is individual and characteristic in her expression,
and so closely does the expression depend for its full play and life, in every
other feature, on the moving impulse of the eyes.
Does my poor portrait of her, my fond, patient labour of long and happy days,
show me these things? Ah, how few of them are in the dim mechanical drawing, and
how many in the mind with which I regard it! A fair, delicate girl, in a pretty
light dress, trifling with the leaves of a sketch-book, while she looks up from
it with truthful innocent blue eyes that is all the drawing can say; all,
perhaps, that even the deeper reach of thought and pen can say in their
language, either. The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy
conceptions of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature that has remained
unknown to us till she appeared. Sympathies that lie too deep for words, too
deep almost for thoughts, are touched, at such times, by other charms than those
which the senses feel and which the resources of expression can realise. The
mystery which underlies the beauty of women is never raised above the reach of
all expression until it has claimed kindred with the deeper mystery in our own
souls. Then, and then only, has it passed beyond the narrow region on which
light falls, in this world, from the pencil and the pen.
Think of her, as you thought of the first woman who quickened the pulses within
you that the rest of her sex had no art to stir. Let the kind, candid blue eyes
meet yours, as they met mine, with the one matchless look which we both remember
so well. Let her voice speak the music that you once loved best, attuned as
sweetly to your ear as to mine. Let her footstep, as she comes and goes, in
these pages, be like that other footstep to whose airy fall your own heart once
beat time. Take her as the visionary nursling of your own fancy; and she will
grow upon you, all the more clearly, as the living woman who dwells in mine.
Among the sensations that crowded on me, when my eyes first looked upon her
familiar sensations which we all know, which spring to life in most of our
hearts, die again in so many, and renew their bright existence in so few
there was one that troubled and perplexed me; one that seemed strangely
inconsistent and unaccountably out of place in Miss Fairlie's presence.
Mingling with the vivid impression produced by the charm of her fair face and
head, her sweet expression, and her winning simplicity of manner, was another
impression, which, in a shadowy way, suggested to me the idea of something
wanting. At one time it seemed like something wanting in
her; at another, like something
wanting in myself, which hindered me from understanding her as I ought. The
impression was always strongest, in the most contradictory manner, when she
looked at me; or, in other words, when I was most conscious of the harmony and
charm of her face, and yet, at the same time, most troubled by the sense of an
incompleteness which it was impossible to discover. Something wanting, something
wanting and where it was, and what it was, I could not say.
The effect of this curious caprice of fancy (as I thought it then) was not of a
nature to set me at my ease, during a first interview with Miss Fairlie. The few
kind words of welcome which she spoke found me hardly self-possessed enough to
thank her in the customary phrases of reply. Observing my hesitation, and no
doubt attributing it, naturally enough, to some momentary shyness, on my part,
Miss Halcombe took the business of talking, as easily and readily as usual, into
her own hands.
"Look there, Mr. Hartright," she said, pointing to the sketch-book on the table,
and to the little delicate wandering hand that was still trifling with it.
"Surely you will acknowledge that your model pupil is found at last? The moment
she hears that you are in the house, she seizes her inestimable sketch-book,
looks universal Nature straight in the face, and longs to begin!"
Miss Fairlie laughed with a ready good humour, which broke out, as brightly as if
it had been part of the sunshine above us, over her lovely face.
"I must not take credit to myself where no credit is due," she said; her clear,
truthful blue eyes looking alternately at Miss Halcombe and at me. "Fond as I am
of drawing, I am so conscious of my own ignorance that I am more afraid than
anxious to begin. Now I know you are here, Mr. Hartright, I find myself looking
over my sketches, as I used to look over my lessons when I was a little girl,
and when I was sadly afraid that I should turn out not fit to be heard."
She made the confession very prettily and simply, and, with quaint, childish
earnestness, drew the sketch-book away close to her own side of the table. Miss
Halcombe cut the knot of the little embarrassment forthwith, in her resolute,
downright way.
"Good, bad, or indifferent," she said, "the pupil's sketches must pass through
the fiery ordeal of the master's judgment and there's an end of it. Suppose
we take them with us in the carriage, Laura, and let Mr. Hartright see them, for
the first time, under circumstances of perpetual jolting and interruption? If we
can only confuse him all through the drive, between Nature as it is, when he
looks up at the view, and Nature as it is not, when he looks down again at our
sketch-books, we shall drive him into the last desperate refuge of paying us
compliments, and shall slip through his professional fingers with our pet
feathers of vanity all unruffled."
"I hope Mr. Hartright will pay me no
compliments," said Miss Fairlie, as we all left the summer-house.
"May I venture to inquire why you express that hope?" I asked.
"Because I shall believe all that you say to me," she answered, simply.
In those few words she unconsciously gave me the key to her whole character; to
that generous trust in others which, in her nature, grew innocently out of the
sense of her own truth. I only knew it intuitively, then. I know it by
experience, now.
We merely waited to rouse good Mrs. Vesey from the place which she still
occupied at the deserted luncheon-table, before we entered the open carriage for
our promised drive. The old lady and Miss Halcombe occupied the back seat; and
Miss Fairlie and I sat together in front, with the sketch-book open between us,
fairly exhibited at last to my professional eyes. All serious criticism on the
drawings, even if I had been disposed to volunteer it, was rendered impossible
by Miss Halcombe's lively resolution to see nothing but the ridiculous side of
the Fine Arts, as practised by herself, her sister, and ladies in general. I can
remember the conversation that passed, far more easily than the sketches that I
mechanically looked over. That part of the talk, especially, in which Miss Fairlie took any share, is still as vividly impressed on my memory as if I had
heard it only a few hours ago.
Yes! let me acknowledge that, on this first day, I let the charm of her presence
lure me from the recollection of myself and my position. The most trifling of
the questions that she put to me, on the subject of using her pencil and mixing
her colours; the slightest alterations of expression in the lovely eyes that
looked into mine, with such an earnest desire to learn all that I could teach
and to discowas overver all that I could show, attracted more of my attention than the
finest view we passed through, or the grandest changes of light and shade, as
they flowed into each other over the waving moorland and the level beach. At any
time, and under any circumstances of human interest, is it not strange to see
how little real hold the objects of the natural world amid which we live can
gain on our hearts and minds? We go to Nature for comfort in trouble, and
sympathy in joy, only in books. Admiration of those beauties of the inanimate
world, which modern poetry so largely and so eloquently describes, is not, even
in the best of us, one of the original instincts of our nature. As children, we
none of us possess it. No uninstructed man or woman possesses it. Those whose
lives are most exclusively passed amid the ever-changing wonders of sea and
land, are also those who are most universally insensible to every aspect of
Nature not directly associated with the human interest of their calling. Our
capacity of appreciating the beauties of the earth we live on, is, in truth, one
of the civilised accomplishments which we all learn, as an Art; and, more, that
very capacity is rarely practised by any of us except when our minds are most
indolent and most unoccupied. How much share have the attractions of Nature ever
had in the pleasurable or painful interests and emotions of ourselves or our
friends? What space do they ever occupy in the thousand little narratives of
personal experience which pass every day by word of mouth from one of us to the
other? All that our minds can compass, all that our hearts can learn, can be
accomplished with equal certainty, equal profit, and equal satisfaction to
ourselves, in the poorest as in the richest prospect that the face of the earth
can show. There is surely a reason for this want of inborn sympathy between the
creature and the creation around it, a reason which may perhaps be found in the
widely differing destinies of man and his earthly sphere. The grandest mountain
prospect that the eye can range over is appointed to annihilation. The smallest
human interest that the pure heart can feel, is appointed to immortality.
We had been out nearly three hours, when the carriage again passed through the
gates of Limmeridge House.
On our way back, I had let the ladies settle for themselves the first point of
view which they were to sketch, under my instructions, on the afternoon of the
next day. When they withdrew to dress for dinner, and when I was alone again in
my little sitting-room, my spirits seemed to leave me on a sudden. I felt ill at
ease and dissatisfied with myself, I hardly knew why. Perhaps I was now
conscious, for the first time, of having enjoyed our drive too much in the
character of a guest, and too little in the character of a drawing-master.
Perhaps that strange sense of something wanting, either in Miss Fairlie or in
myself, which had perplexed me when I was first introduced to her, haunted me
still. Anyhow, it was a relief to my spirits when the dinner-hour called me out
of my solitude, and took me back to the society of the ladies of the house.
I was struck, on entering the drawing-room, by the curious contrast, rather in
material than in colour, of the dresses which they now wore. While Mrs. Vesey
and Miss Halcombe were richly clad (each in the manner most becoming to her
age), the first in silver-grey, and the second in that delicate primrose-yellow
colour, which matches so well with a dark complexion and black hair, Miss
Fairlie was unpretendingly and almost poorly dressed in plain white muslin. It
was spotlessly pure; it was beautifully put on; but still it was the sort of
dress which the wife or daughter of a poor man might have worn; and it made the
heiress of Limmeridge House, so far as externals went, look less affluent in
circumstances than her own governess. At a later period, when I learnt to know
more of Miss Fairlie's character, I discovered that this curious contrast, on
the wrong side, was due to her natural delicacy of feeling and natural intensity
of aversion to the slightest personal display of her own wealth. Neither Mrs.
Vesey nor Miss Halcombe could ever induce her to let the advantage in dress
desert the two ladies who were poor, to lean to the side of the one lady who was
rich.
When dinner was over, we returned together to the drawing-room. Although Mr. Fairlie (emulating the magnificent condescension of the monarch who had picked
up Titian's brush for him) had instructed his butler to consult my wishes in
relation to the wine that I might prefer after dinner, I was resolute enough to
resist the temptation of sitting in solitary grandeur among bottles of my own
choosing, and sensible enough to ask the ladies' permission to leave the table
with them habitually, on the civilised foreign plan, during the period of my
residence at Limmeridge House.
The drawing-room, to which we had now withdrawn for the rest of the evening, was
on the ground-floor, and was of the same shape and size as the breakfast-room.
Large glass doors at the lower end opened on to a terrace, beautifully
ornamented along its whole length with a profusion of flowers. The soft, hazy
twilight was just shading leaf and blossom alike into harmony with its own sober
hues, as we entered the room; and the sweet evening scent of the flowers met us
with its fragrant welcome through the open glass doors. Good Mrs. Vesey (always
the first of the party to sit down) took possession of an arm-chair in a corner,
and dozed off comfortably to sleep. At my request, Miss Fairlie placed herself
at the piano. As I followed her to a seat near the instrument, I saw Miss
Halcombe retire into a recess of one of the side windows, to proceed with the
search through her mother's letters by the last quiet rays of the evening light.
How vividly that peaceful home-picture of the drawing-room comes back to me
while I write! From the place where I sat, I could see Miss Halcombe's graceful
figure, half of it in soft light, half in mysterious shadow, bending intently
over the letters in her lap; while, nearer to me, the fair profile of the player
at the piano was just delicately defined against the faintly deepening
background of the inner wall of the room. Outside, on the terrace, the
clustering flowers and long grasses and creepers waved so gently in the light
evening air, that the sound of their rustling never reached us. The sky was
without a cloud; and the dawning mystery of moonlight began to tremble already
in the region of the eastern heaven. The sense of peace and seclusion soothed
all thought and feeling into a rapt, unearthly repose; and the balmy quiet that
deepened ever with the deepening light, seemed to hover over us with a gentler
influence still, when there stole upon it from the piano the heavenly tenderness
of the music of Mozart. It was an evening of sights and sounds never to forget.
We all sat silent in the places we had chosen Mrs. Vesey still sleeping, Miss
Fairlie still playing, Miss Halcombe still reading till the light failed us.
By this time the moon had stolen round to the terrace, and soft, mysterious rays
of light were slanting already across the lower end of the room. The change from
the twilight obscurity was so beautiful, that we banished the lamps, by common
consent, when the servant brought them in and kept the large room unlighted,
except by the glimmer of the two candles at the piano.
For half an hour more, the music still went on. After that, the beauty of the
moonlight view on the terrace tempted Miss Fairlie out to look at it; and I
followed her. When the candles at the piano had been lighted, Miss Halcombe had
changed her place, so as to continue her examination of the letters by their
assistance. We left her, on a low chair, at one side of the instrument, so
absorbed over her reading that she did not seem to notice when we moved.
We had been out on the terrace together, just in front of the glass doors,
hardly so long as five minutes, I should think; and Miss Fairlie was, by my
advice, just tying her white handkerchief over her head as a precaution against
the night air when I heard Miss Halcombe's voice low, eager, and altered
from its natural lively tone pronounce my name.
"Mr. Hartright," she said, "will you come here for a minute? I want to speak to
you."
I entered the room again immediately. The piano stood about half way down along
the inner wall. On the side of the instrument farthest from the terrace, Miss
Halcombe was sitting with the letters scattered on her lap, and with one in her
hand selected from them, and held close to the candle. On the side nearest to
the terrace there stood a low ottoman, on which I took my place. In this
position, I was not far from the glass doors and I could see Miss Fairlie
plainly, as she passed and repassed the opening on to the terrace; walking
slowly from end to end of it in the full radiance of the moon.
"I want you to listen while I read the concluding passages in this letter," said
Miss Halcombe. "Tell me if you think they throw any light upon your strange
adventure on the road to London. The letter is addressed by my mother to her
second husband, Mr. Fairlie; and the date refers to a period of between eleven
and twelve years since. At that time, Mr. and Mrs. Fairlie, and my half-sister
Laura, had been living for years in this house; and I was away from them,
completing my education at a school in Paris."
She looked and spoke earnestly, and, as I thought, a little uneasily, as well. At
the moment when she raised the letter to the candle before beginning to read it,
Miss Fairlie passed us on the terrace, looked in for a moment, and, seeing that
we were engaged, slowly walked on.
Miss Halcombe began to read, as follows:
" 'You will be tired, my dear Philip, of
hearing perpetually about my schools and my scholars. Lay the blame, pray, on
the dull uniformity of life at Limmeridge, and not on me. Besides, this time, I
have something really interesting to tell you about a new scholar.
" 'You know old Mrs. Kempe, at the village shop. Well, after years of ailing,
the doctor has at last given her up, and she is dying slowly, day by day. Her
only living relation, a sister, arrived last week to take care of her. This
sister comes all the way from Hampshire her name is Mrs. Catherick. Four days
ago Mrs. Catherick came here to see me, and brought her only child with her, a
sweet little girl about a year older than our darling Laura '"
As the last sentence fell from the reader's lips, Miss Fairlie passed us on the
terrace once more. She was softly singing to herself one of the melodies which
she had been playing earlier in the evening. Miss Halcombe waited till she had
passed out of sight again; and then went on with the letter:
" 'Mrs. Catherick is a decent, well-behaved, respectable woman; middle aged, and
with the remains of having been moderately, only moderately, nice-looking. There
is something in her manner and her appearance, however, which I can't make
out. She is reserved about herself to the point of downright secrecy and there
is a look in her face I can't describe it which suggests to me that she
has something on her mind. She is altogether what you would call a walking
mystery. Her errand at Limmeridge House, however, was simple enough. When she
left Hampshire to nurse her sister, Mrs. Kempe, through her last illness, she
had been obliged to bring her daughter with her, through having no one at home
to take care of the little girl. Mrs. Kempe may die in a week's time, or may
linger on for months; and Mrs. Catherick's object was to ask me to let her
daughter, Anne, have the benefit of attending my school; subject to the
condition of her being removed from it to go home again with her mother, after
Mrs. Kempe's death. I consented at once and when Laura and I went out for our
walk, we took the little girl (who is just eleven years old) to the school, that
very day.' "
Once more, Miss Fairlie's figure, bright and soft in its snowy muslin dress
her face prettily framed by the white folds of the handkerchief which she had
tied under her chin passed by us in the moonlight. Once more, Miss Halcombe
waited till she was out of sight; and then went on:
" 'I have taken a violent fancy, Philip, to my new scholar, for a reason which I
mean to keep till the last for the sake of surprising you. Her mother having
told me as little about the child as she told me of herself, I was left to
discover (which I did on the first day when we tried her at lessons) that the
poor little thing's intellect is not developed as it ought to be at her age.
Seeing this, I had her up to the house the next day, and privately arranged with
the doctor to come and watch her and question her, and tell me what he thought.
His opinion is that she will grow out of it. But he says her careful bringing-up
at school is a matter of great importance just now, because her unusual slowness
in acquiring ideas implies an unusual tenacity in keeping them, when they are
once received into her mind. Now, my love, you must not imagine, in your
off-hand way, that I have been attaching myself to an idiot. This poor little
Anne Catherick is a sweet, affectionate, grateful girl; and says the quaintest,
prettiest things (as you shall judge by an instance), in the most oddly sudden,
surprised, half-frightened way. Although she is dressed very neatly, her clothes
show a sad want of taste in colour and pattern. So I arranged, yesterday, that
some of our darling Laura's old white frocks and white hats should be altered
for Anne Catherick; explaining to her that little girls of her complexion looked
neater and better in all white than in anything else. She hesitated and seemed
puzzled for a minute; then flushed up, and appeared to understand. Her little
hand clasped mine, suddenly. She kissed it, Philip; and said (oh, so earnestly!),
"I will always wear white as long as I live. It will help me to remember you,
ma'am, and to think that I am pleasing you still, when I go away and see you no
more." This is only one specimen of the quaint things she says so prettily. Poor
little soul! She shall have a stock of white frocks, made with good deep tucks,
to let out for her as she grows ' "
Miss Halcombe paused, and looked at me across the piano.
"Did the forlorn woman whom you met in the high road seem young?" she asked.
"Young enough to be two or three-and-twenty?"
"Yes, Miss Halcombe, as young as that."
"And she was strangely dressed, from head to foot, all in white?"
"All in white."
While the answer was passing my lips, Miss Fairlie glided into view on the
terrace, for the third time. Instead of proceeding on her walk, she stopped,
with her back turned towards us; and, leaning on the balustrade of the terrace,
looked down into the garden beyond. My eyes fixed upon the white gleam of her
muslin gown and head-dress in the moonlight, and a sensation, for which I can
find no name a sensation that quickened my pulse, and raised a fluttering at
my heart began to steal over me.
"All in white!" Miss Halcombe repeated. "The most important sentences in the
letter, Mr. Hartright, are those at the end, which I will read to you
immediately. But I can't help dwelling a little upon the coincidence of the
white costume of the woman you met, and the white frocks which produced that
strange answer from my mother's little scholar. The doctor may have been wrong
when he discovered the child's defects of intellect, and predicted that she
would 'grow out of them.' She may never have grown out of them; and the old
grateful fancy about dressing in white, which was a serious feeling to the girl,
may be a serious feeling to the woman still."
I said a few words in answer I hardly know what. All my attention was
concentrated on the white gleam of Miss Fairlie's muslin dress.
"Listen to the last sentences of the letter," said Miss Halcombe. "I think they
will surprise you."
As she raised the letter to the light of the candle, Miss Fairlie turned from
the balustrade, looked doubtfully up and down the terrace, advanced a step
towards the glass doors, and then stopped, facing us.
Meanwhile, Miss Halcombe read me the last sentences to which she had referred:
" 'And now, my love, seeing that I am at the end of my paper, now for the real
reason, the surprising reason, for my fondness for little Anne Catherick. My
dear Philip, although she is not half so pretty, she is, nevertheless, by one of
those extraordinary caprices of accidental resemblance which one sometimes sees,
the living likeness, in her hair, her complexion, the colour of her eyes, and
the shape of her face ' "
I started up from the ottoman, before
Miss Halcombe could pronounce the next words. A thrill of the same feeling which
ran through me when the touch was laid upon my shoulder on the lonely high-road,
chilled me again.
There stood Miss Fairlie, a white figure, alone in the moonlight; in her
attitude, in the turn of her head, in her complexion, in the shape of her face,
the living image, at that distance and under those circumstances, of the woman
in white! The doubt which had troubled my mind for hours and hours past, flashed
into conviction in an instant. That "something wanting" was my own recognition
of the ominous likeness between the fugitive from the asylum the heiress at
Limmeridge House.
"You see it!" said Miss Halcombe. She dropped the useless letter, and her eyes
flashed as they met mine. "You see it now, as my mother saw it eleven years
since!"
"I see it more unwillingly than I can say. To associate that forlorn,
friendless, lost woman, even by an accidental likeness only, with Miss Fairlie,
seems like casting a shadow on the future of the bright creature who stands
looking at us now. Let me lose the impression again, as soon as possible. Call
her in, out of the dreary moonlight pray call her in!"
"Mr. Hartright, you surprise me. Whatever women may be, I thought that men, in
the nineteenth century, were above superstition."
"Pray call her in!"
"Hush, hush! She is coming of her own accord. Say nothing in her presence. Let
this discovery of the likeness be kept a secret between you and me. Come in,
Laura; come in, and wake Mrs. Vesey with the piano. Mr. Hartright is petitioning
for some more music, and he wants it, this time, of the lightest and liveliest
kind."
All The Year Round, 10 December 1859, Vol.II, No.33, pp.141-147.
Weekly Part 3.
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